Triumph of Saint Katherine
On the 25th of Nov was FNM Legacy @demospel and I decided to sleeve a jeskai control deck with my newly arrived Triumph of Saint Katherine playset. I'm generally not fan of control as I already stated before. Games go to time and I'm neither good nor patient. However, it's by playing that you learn! This time I salvaged the evening - that was really not a triumph - by winning my second match...
0-2: lands
1-0: 4c control
?-2: naya lands
1-2: delver
lands
G1, my opponent is off to the races with a T2 marit on the play. I had neither FOW in hopening nor Swords to answer lage. That was rather fast! Second game went somewhat longer but I stumbled on mana the first few turns and could never really recover. My sideboard plan was not perfect. We played some games afterwards with my backup deck.
4c control
My opponent is a very slow player and I know we are going to time. G1, my opponent stumbles on assembling his colors and especially finding Uro's. I manage to stick a T3feri, then a Narset. I have the upper hand and I decide not to take it too fast. If I have one win, he will not have time to comeback. I manage to deal the final blow with ToSK and we go to G2... 35mins in! G2 my biggest mistake was to cast Dress Down when he fetched a land. I wanted to cycle the card as my hand was so-so. 2nd main he casts an Uro that I now have to plow, that was not a smart move and probably gave him a lot of time to recover. Other than that we exchanged threats with a great moment of Flusters on the stack being countered for a resolved narset. I remember that I drew shitload of lands in the second G2 with no threats/cantrips and that what kept him in the game.
Naya lands
I don't remember all the interactions but I was prepared to face Minsc and kept a lot of interaction for him to not hit the battlefield. I killed reclaimers on sight but he managed to stick a protected marit lage after a while. G2, I did not counter a GSZ for x=1 wich was a big mistake. His sylvan safekeeper carried him to victory as I did not find any boardwipes to clear the board!
Delver
I'm always happy to play against delver. It's an important matchup to face and to understand. G1 goes pretty fast and he manages to kill me with a lot of burn. G2 I manage to handle his threats and start drawing cards with my card advantage. He concedes after I answer his murktide. G3 was really interesting but he managed to stick a TNN for which I found 0 answers. I was digging for boardwipe/dress-down but in the process I was shortsighted and forgot that ToSK can simply been cast for it's CMC. I think this would have given me enough life/time to actually find an answer!
Takeaways
I did a lot of mistakes and this shows in my results. Any small missplay cascades and there is no free "get out of jail card". This makes it really difficult for me as I love a 1+2 deck where there is a main plan and a side combo! On friday nights I also get impatient and wanna go home after 3 games. This always makes it a tough sell. I think I would enjoy such gameplay more on a relaxed weekend day! Anyways I learned a lot but it's time to prepare for the latest big event of the year in belgium M³ @Mol!